


Merry Christmas, In Case I Don't See You (but it's too early for that)

by 2ne4 (17826)



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Christmas Angst, M/M, Purple Prose, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:41:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17826/pseuds/2ne4
Summary: Nick's got a boyfriend and Harry's not met him yet, but it's a time for miracles.Besides, what's Christmas without a little sadness and the nagging feeling that your friends might actually be your family?





	Merry Christmas, In Case I Don't See You (but it's too early for that)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by many convos with the lovely GreenAubergine , and by Nick saying that he wasn't sure if it was too early to say merry christmas yet , and by far too many listens of This Time Last Year by Rina Sawayama

Nick was a winter person. Sure, he loved music festivals and getting a tan on more sun-soaked holidays than was strictly necessary, but there was something about the way Christmas allowed for dozens of cosy dinner parties and secret santas that just suited him. His breath looked beautiful when it puffed out white with warmth and blended with the snow, rather than the heavy grey of cigarette smoke against grimey brick.

Harry wasn't a winter person. He lived in the LA sun and partied in Tokyo's rain and never felt that firelit pull to home anymore, but even he could admit there was something beautiful about the way windows twinkled when trussed up with fairy lights. Still, he had no tree in this house. He'd only come back to London because something had bothered him about the huge fir in the foyer of his LA home, dripping with gold baubles and red tinsel that caught the midday sun and had been hung by someone else.

Really, it wasn't much better here; all his neighbours had hauled miles of glittering lights onto lush evergreens in their massive fuck-off bay windows, each of them picking a different colour scheme - gaudy pink and purple on his left, icey silver and blue on the right. His fault for moving into a rich neighbourhood. The photos his mum sent him had somehow made his phone feel heavy ever since he got them: warm amber lights from the garden centre bordering the roof, sparkly pinecone baubles on the windowsill, a battered handmade angel topping the tree. He remembered glitter under his nails the last time he'd helped decorate. He remembered offering to buy her new ornaments the year after X Factor. He remembered making a paper plate into that angel.

Earlier, he had struggled to choose an outfit, caught between the impulse to impress and to intimidate, and trying not to acknowledge the desire to not want to do either of those things. Also, apparently, unable to stop listing verbs in a wanky internal monologue. _Get your shit together, Styles, focus_. Changing infinitives to imperatives didn't mean he wasn't still listing verbs, though.

Half an hour before he had been due to leave, he had started a text - _how formal do u want me???_ \- then deleted it and closed iMessage, pulled up WhatsApp and tapped Sarah's name instead. Their conversation hadn't been long.

_What do I wear to meet a not-exs not-new boyfriend_

_go ask adam_

_What would Adam know??? He's so married_

_what would i know_

_im busy_

_mitch met my clit under the mistletoe_

Harry had snorted despite himself, never one to back down from a dirty sense of humour.

_Ok x give his fingers a kiss from me x or his dick idm x_

He had added a few tongue emojis for posterity then dropped his phone back on the bed and went to take a shower but the problem, he had realised, still standing under the hot spray 20 minutes later, was that this was Nick. And before, there hadn't been a _last minute_ with Nick - Harry would turn up when he turned up, usually uninvited, and they'd go from there, no deadlines because plans would have required commitment to a schedule he hadn't been able to predict more than a week in advance. If the rest of their friends had been part of things, they'd known to allow for leeway with Nick-and-Harry because that's just what you did with Nick-and-Harry. But now there was a _last minute_ because there was a _not-new boyfriend_ , and _their friends_ had gone back to being _Nick's friends_ , and _Nick-and-Harry_ were now _Harry and Nick_ , and it was messing with his head. He hadn't spent long enough in London since 2014, everything still felt like yesterday.

Outside, the air was cold though, had that smell that was always November-y regardless of the actual month, and that was festive enough, Harry supposed. His fingers were going past numb and starting to sting, losing their grip on the half a dozen present bags he was taking to put under Nick's tree; he held no hopes that anyone else would have left any there for him, not after the last two years where he didn't manage to go and pick them up. Still, there were bags here for Aimee and Ian and the kids, and Pixie and George, and Alexa, Fifi, Tommo and Sam and not-so-little-Sid, a couple others. There were even presents - separate presents, two each - for Pig and Stinky and the not-new boyfriend, but nothing for Nick wrapped in tissue and hanging from ribbon handles. As he'd been gathering the gifts to leave, an image had popped into his head of Nick opening Harry's present tonight, in front of the not-new boyfriend, and he'd shuddered and left that particular bag upstairs.

As he climbed the steps to Nick's front door, he vaguely started to regret asking his driver to drop him off at the end of the road - all he'd been doing was putting off the inevitable really, and now his nose was streaming. _Yep, this is definitely a better first impression than being driven over by a driver they already know you have, good plan_. He tried to figure out the best way to ring the doorbell when he couldn't lift either armful of presents above hip height.

Before he could work it out, though, the door opened abruptly and Harry was met with familiarly joyous barks from dogs obscured by the gift bags. He just stood there for a second, eyes locked on Nick's, seeing everything and nothing all at once. It was just Nick.

"Well, come in then, it's bloody freezing out there," Nick said shortly, and the moment passed.

"S'not so bad," Harry countered automatically, but he shuffled inside, trying to keep the dogs from slipping out past him into the snow.

"Bullshit, babe," Nick replied, an affect he'd stolen from Annie but had quickly stopped being ironic. He waved a hand at the bags. "Dump those on the mat to dry out for a minute, why d'you even have so much stuff?"

"I know you like to get everyone's presents under the tree early, figured I'd bring 'em all now." Harry left them at the door and hung up his coat, leaning down to unzip his boots. There was a weird moment of silence, the dogs panting and some vaguely festive music muffled through the floorboards, as Nick watched him. When he stood back up, their eyes met again and Harry hesitated.

"Come 'ere, then," Nick smiled warmly, and then they were hugging, tight and solid as ever, just the right height for Harry to bury his cold nose against Nick's neck and make him squirm, but he didn't.

"Is- where is-" Harry started, but was interrupted.

"-just on an emergency trip for garlic, we ran out during cooking," Nick ploughed on, and stepped back. "He should be home in a little bit."

Harry nodded. "Sounds good."

"Let's get those under the tree, yeah?"

"Thanks," Harry nodded again, and gave Pig and Stinky some hello strokes as he passed some bags back to Nick.

"Ooh, George's looks suspiciously small and expensive," Nick said, poking nosily through the bags, "and if Alexa's is those trainers she liked, take them back, I already bagsied buying them for her."

Harry, who had no idea which trainers Alexa liked and had got her a vintage shirt he thought would suit her, winked. "You'll have to wait and see, babes."

Nick rolled his eyes but smiled. "C'mon, Pig, Stinky," he commanded, and they followed the dogs up to the sitting room. Last time Harry had been upstairs, he'd been dogsitting while Nick covered Scott's show, and he had left it in the comfortable sort of chaos it always embodied; today, there wasn't a vinyl out of place, and on Nick's coffee table, there was a shallow glass bowl with some classy-looking crisps, closer to M&S than Walker's at a glance.

"Aren't you more of a quavers kind of guy?"

"Hmm?" Nick looked up from where he was rearranging the presents round the tree to accommodate Harry's contribution. "Oh, nah, those are my new faves, rosemary, black pepper, and lime."

Harry raised his eyebrows.

"Don't knock it 'till you try it," Nick cautioned jokily, and Harry put his hands up in surrender.

"I'm sure they're great," he said, and crouched by the tree instead, helping Nick prod the gifts into a more manageable pile. It was a very attractive tree, good branch-to-tinsel ratio, with some camp glittered ornaments peppered in among more personal ones, a truly Nick-ish assortment of things. There was a shark with a candycane in its mouth staring directly into Harry's eyes.

"Well, this is adorable."

Nick looked over and laughed, sitting back. "Sunday chose that for me," he grinned, "bonkers, ennit?"

"There's this shop in LA that sells stuff like this, always makes me think of Aimee," Harry said, "you should come some time before the sales end, bag a whole new decor for next year."

"Yeah," Nick agreed, and there was a time he would have meant that. "Love a Christmas sale, me."

"Stock up on candles," Harry nodded and sat too so they were both looking up at the tree. "What's your favourite decoration?"

"Oh, I couldn't possibly pick," Nick said, scandalised as if Harry had asked him to chose between his dogs, then pointed to a penguin that was obviously once fluffy. "That one."

Harry vaguely recognised it from the times he'd helped Nick decorate his tree. "How come?"

Nick shrugged, and when his hand landed back from pointing, his pinky touched Harry's. "First Christmas when me and Henry and Gillian lived together, my dad bought down a box of decs for us, put 'em up while we were at work 'cause we didn't remember to do our own. Left that one when he came to pick 'em back up." He shifted his hand away so they weren't touching once more. "What's yours?"

Harry looked away from Nick quickly after their eyes met for a second, turning his head back towards the tree. "That one," he pointed to an ugly glass santa he'd bought Nick back from the Netherlands once.

Nick snorted. "That's the worst one I own."

Harry looked back at him again. "You still put it up though." Nick held his eyes for a long moment before looking down.

"Guess I do," he said, and got to his feet, offering Harry a hand to pull him up. "Red, white, or beer?"

Harry grabbed his hand and yanked himself up, grinning at Nick's yelp of protest. "White, please, Nicholas."

"White you are, Harold," Nick smirked, and quickly jumped out of hitting range, the sudden movement making Stinky yip.

"Me too, Blob, me too," Harry sighed.

"So, how long are you back in the big smoke for?" Nick said over his shoulder. Something echoed in Harry's memory, a significantly shittier tree, a smaller flat, a _how long do I have you for_ pressed against his laurels.

Harry shook himself and joined Nick in the kitchen. "Dunno really, didn't plan on being back here this soon, was thinking of going to Paris for new year's. Wanna come?"

"Can't, got plans with the rest of the crew," Nick said, "as always."

"Yeah, as always! Try something new, mate!" Harry was only half joking.

"Ditch my chums? Never!" Nick was more than half not.

"Ditch 'em, who cares? There's always next year, and I heard the view from the Eiffel tower is crazy cool at midnight."

Something flashed across Nick's face. "Just because you lost a sense of home somewhere between Wembley and Rio doesn't mean we all did, Haz."

He ignored the way that nickname bit at his throat on the way down. _I'm in love with you but you don't even like me_ , he thought, then almost flinched. _Where the fuck did that come from?_

Nick took his silence as anger and laughed hollowly, then shook his head. "Forget it, man, forget I said anything," he said, "it's Christmas, I'm sorry."

"That's fine," Harry managed to say, "don't worry, I'm sorry too. Forget new year's."

"What's a couple blows between friends," Nick said breezily, then looked stricken. "I mean, like hits, not like..."

Harry's stained smile suddenly felt real. "Like casual oral sex?"

"Fuck off," Nick warned, but he was grinning. "So you're around for Christmas?"

"In England, yeah," Harry said, trying not to get his hopes up. "Why, you looking for company?"

"Just wondering about boxing day," Nick said breezily, "we're going to his parent's on Christmas day, up to Oldham on boxing day and was thinking of inviting Anne, if she wanted to come for leftovers and the hair of the sherry that bit her." He was obviously glossing over that admission, _his parents_ , because that was a big step by anyone's standards, let alone Nick's weirdly low ones. Harry felt a bit punch drunk, honestly, and the cavity in his chest deepened a bit.

"Yeah, I mean, I had, like," he cleared his throat, "I was going to do something with Jeff's family, when I was in LA, but I dunno, I don't feel like going back, really." Now Harry was glossing over things. "Gemma's doing Christmas with Michal's lot so I thought I'd do the whole thing with mum. Y'know, make sure she's not, like, lonely, I guess."

"Well, you'd be welcome too," Nick said politely. "Mum always loves a bit o' Henry Stars at yuletide."

Harry smiled perfunctorily. "I'll shoot mum a text then."

"Don't bother, there's already a card in the post inviting her," Nick waved his hand. "You should just show up too, surprise her. She'll be mortified she didn't get you a gift.

Harry rolled his eyes and said teasingly, "Nicholas, you know she's more likely to have my present ready to give to mum than she is to have yours at all."

"Shove it, just 'cause it's true doesn't mean you should say it," Nick grinned, and then there came the sound of keys in the front door.

The butterflies in Harry's throat had only just settled down, but now they were back with a vengeance.

"Open this, will you," Nick said in a strained voice, thrusting the bottle of white wine at Harry, "I'll go help with bags."

"Sure," Harry agreed, equally pitchy, taking the wine gratefully.

"Glasses are above the sink," Nick said and hotfooted it out the room.

 _I know_ , Harry wanted to shout. He tried to roll his eyes, but when he looked up, he realised they had been standing under the mistletoe the whole time.

He went to get the glasses.

**Author's Note:**

> Typed up in the throes of insomnia and barely checked before posting so please do point out any typos , I'd really appreciate it
> 
> Find me at [gricknimshaw](https://www.gricknimshaw.tumblr.com) or literally always rereading my comments
> 
> Happy holidays to all , and I don't care if it's too early to say it x


End file.
